Do grognards have to be jerks?

[Mark CMG]

What's brown and sticky?

Spoiler

A stick.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

What's brown and sticky?

Spoiler

A stick.

Oi though the question was 'What's brown and sounds like a bell?'

Just an Idol thought...

The Auld Grump, or a Pythonian moment....

 

[haakon1]

The Auld Grump, who doesn't even have a dog.

After what WOTC did to your previous dog, I can't blame you.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

When they cancel 4e, I will (mostly) stop my complaining about 4e.

So, you can only feel better about D&D if things other people like are destroyed? That's why we can't have nice things - and why the edition wars will continue forever. Only complete annihilation is acceptable, it seems.

 

[Dannager]

Does anyone honestly think that WOTC could have predicted the backlash reactions? Really?

Yes. The reactions were, often, totally unreasonable, but that doesn't mean they were unpredictable. The gaming community is a bunch of nerds, and nerds don't take change well. At all. Every change is a personal affront, every omission a betrayal. Did we see a greater backlash than ever before? Yeah, but not because the changes were more extreme. We just heard about it more because suddenly everyone and their mother are online and talking about it.

It's sad that a gaming company would be forced to anticipate this reaction, but that's who we are, and we are incapable of feeling the shame for our poor behavior that is necessary to change it.

 

[pemerton]

Did we see a greater backlash than ever before? Yeah, but not because the changes were more extreme.

I'm not sure I agree with this. As wrecan said on a recent thread (probably the "dissociated mechanics" one), 4e is the first edition of D&D to really change the rules of the game. 3E added some rules to AD&D, and it tweaked a bit with the class progressions, but the fundamentals of class progression (new hit dice, better attacks and saves, and new spells slots for casters) didn't change. And the core action resolution mechanics changed hardly at all.

Now it seems undeniable to me (although some do deny it) that even those modest changes, plus some other aspects of the game like magic item and wealth-by-level rules, combined to produce a dramatically different play experience from AD&D. But this is emergent, and seems to have taken some time to be widely noticed.

Whereas the likely departure of 4e gameplay from the AD&D/3E norm is evident from the get-go.

 

[Umbran]

This seems to have turned into, and is remaining a "let's rehash 3e/4e issues from three years ago" thread. Such have shown to be other than constructive in the past, and seem to tend to live on well beyond reasonableness, seemingly because neither side likes to let the other have the last word.

I'll do everyone a favor, and remove the temptation. Thread closed.